Isobel on the Way to the Corner Shop (17 page)

Isobel hoped that this was tactlessness rather than malice, but she felt uneasy.

So did the fat lady.

‘It’s a long way to come from the city, isn’t it?’ She looked towards Isobel and added, ‘What about you, dear? How did you find out?’

‘It just crept up on me.’

Val asked, ‘What part of Sydney do you come from?’

They were on their way to discovering common acquaintances when the visitor looked at her watch.

‘I’ll have to be going. It’s your rest period soon, isn’t it? During your rest period we have to go and look at Surgery, the operating tables and all, to which I don’t look forward. Only through the glass door, thank goodness, we can’t go in. A doctor’s going to tell us all about the wonderful operations. I only hope I don’t pass out. Well, it’s been lovely talking to you. So nice to meet you.’

She got up refreshed, smiled to Isobel, squeezed Val’s hand in appreciation and walked out.

In two minutes she was back, looking scared and puzzled.

‘I think there’s something wrong with the boy next door. The one in the bed by the window.’

Val looked at Isobel, who had somehow assumed responsibility for Lance.

‘I’ll go and see what he’s doing.’

She put on her dressing gown and slippers and went to investigate.

Lance was sitting up in bed looking malevolently cheerful.

‘What did you do?’

He responded by raising each fist to scratch an armpit in an ape-like gesture, turning to climb the bars of the bedhead, leaning outwards with one hand to snatch imaginary peanuts. It was a lively performance, but most unlikely to impress Matron.

Isobel giggled.

‘Well, you shouldn’t have. Now I have to go back and tell the nice lady what a rude little beast you are.’

He scratched at his armpits, snarled and said, ‘Suit yourself.’

Isobel returned.

‘He was playing at being a monkey in the zoo. Catching peanuts. Sorry,’ she said.

The visitor was thoughtful.

‘That’s just what I said to Dorothy. I said, “I wouldn’t thank anyone to come looking at me in bed as if I was an exhibit in a zoo.” But Dorothy said we had to support the Society and I supposed she was right. All the kinder of you to make me welcome. The little boy was really very clever. I’m sorry I was too dumb to see the joke.’

‘You could have thrown him a peanut,’ said Isobel as she climbed back into bed.

The visitor said, uncertainly, ‘Would he have liked that?’

‘No, but it would have served him right.’

‘I think it’s wonderful of him to show so much spirit. Well, it was so nice to meet you. I really have to go. I’ll just call in on the little boy and tell him I appreciate his humour.’

That’ll fix him, thought Isobel with satisfaction and felt positively affectionate towards the visitor.

‘That was a very nice woman,’ said Val.

‘Very nice indeed,’ agreed Isobel.

‘Dear me. I thought she’d be too normal to suit you.’

The hooter went then to mark the beginning of rest period, which spared Isobel the need to reply.

Janet’s husband was observed to have changed the time of his visits to the morning.

‘It is very strange,’ said Val. ‘If he comes tomorrow morning…there has to be a reason.’

In the afternoon Miss Landers, who was in charge of occupational therapy, came to visit Isobel. She was also of the bird persuasion, but more ibis than parrot or raven—a long-legged bird, recently startled. Her kind, open countenance went well with her job. She offered Isobel the choice of basketry, soft toys or knitting. Isobel chose knitting. Miss Landers departed and returned with a bundle of heavy, iron grey wool and a carton containing knitting leaflets and needles of various sizes. She looked depressed as she counted out skeins of wool, as if she wished she had better to offer.

Isobel took two leaflets, one with directions for a classic pullover, the other with directions for a blouse knitted with fine wool in a complicated pattern of narrow vertical leaves outlined and veined with lace. She took a pair of No 8 needles for the body of the pullover and finer needles for the basque.

‘If you can get somebody on D grade to help with the winding, dear. Don’t overdo it.’

Arm movements were still restricted on C grade.

That somebody was already at the door, smiling his Cheshire Cat smile.

‘I can do this for you,’ said Boris. ‘So often I have held the wool for my mother while she rolled the wool into a ball. I know to wind over my fingers in the proper way. You may hold the wool and keep your arms still, while I roll the ball.’

‘Yes. That would be the best thing,’ said Miss Landers with relief. ‘So good of you, Boris.’

She left. Boris took the armchair and separated a skein from the bundle. He looped it over her hands and set to work.

This was restful, for he did not seem inclined to conversation.

Val said, ‘I’d like to see the pattern.’

Boris handed over the leaflets and continued to roll the wool.

‘What do you want this one for?’

Val held up the leaflet with the directions for the lace pullover.

‘I thought I’d like to try the stitch.’

‘But it’s for 2-ply. You don’t have any 2-ply, do you?’

‘I’ll reduce the number of repeats, that’s all.’

‘But isn’t that wool 8-ply?’

Val pursued the topic with the tenacity she devoted to the observation of the movements of Janet’s husband.

‘But it will work out all right if I reduce the number of repeats.’

‘You don’t mean that you’re going to knit a lacy pattern in 8-ply. You can’t do that!’

‘Why not?’

‘Well, you can’t. Everybody knows you can’t. Nobody ever knits lacy patterns in 8-ply.’

‘Always a first time.’

Boris finished the ball and went to retrieve the leaflets. Val appeared to be in such distress that she was capable of confiscating the offending pattern. He set them on Isobel’s cabinet, gave her a private, sympathetic grin and separated another skein from the bundle on the floor beside him.

Isobel found herself forced to placate Val.

‘I’ll just try it and if it doesn’t work, I’ll pull it undone and try something else.’

Talk about measuring out your life with coffee spoons! Salt spoons would be more like it.

‘Of course it won’t work. I don’t know why you waste your time trying it.’

They rolled a second ball.

‘Enough for today,’ said Boris. ‘I shall put your wool in your wardrobe and I shall come back tomorrow morning. Put your arms down and rest now.’

Isobel had no intention of resting. She cast on, counted her stitches and began on the basque, frustrated when the hooter went. The hooter was the law. She put down her knitting without finishing the row and took the rest-period position.

Her mind however was not in the rest-period mode. She was angry.

What the hell does it have to do with her? Bloody odious woman.

Her rage was affecting her breathing. That wouldn’t do. She controlled the breathing and with it her rage.

Keep calm. Keep calm. Don’t let her get to you. I’m going to do it my way, I’ll finish it my way even if it’s a disaster. But that’s letting her get to me, too.

Breath control again.

I’m not here. I’m in Czechoslovakia with Mr Vorocic.

If that didn’t work, she would proceed to the next resource, silently reciting a favourite poem.

The metre was soothing. She finished the hour in the proper state of remedial torpor.

With thick wool and coarse needles, and Isobel’s pleasure in the movement of her liberated fingers, the work went quickly.

Next day, she was ready to start on the disputed pattern.

‘You’re not really going to knit that ridiculous stitch, are you?’

Isobel nodded, reading aloud from the leaflet, ‘Purl 2, wool round needle, knit 3, wool forward, slip 1, knit 2 together, pass slip stitch over, wool forward, knit 3.’

Against this argument, Val had no defence. She sighed in exasperation and was silent.

Lance wandered in.

‘Wotcher doing, Izzy?’

‘Knitting. And go back to bed.’

He settled instead on the end of her bed preparing to watch her at work.

To continue to knit would be to condone his presence—his too frequent presence. She put down her knitting, repeating, ‘Go back to bed, Lance.’

How many times already had she said those words?

‘Yeah, in a minute.’

‘Lance, don’t you have anything to do? Don’t you have correspondence lessons or something?’

‘Finished with all that stuff, kiddo. Turned sixteen. Never made much of school. Knocked a bit of fun out of it sometimes, me and Buzz and Trigger. Buzz used to get some great stuff from the joke shop. Got a smoke bomb once, set it off in the science lab and got the school cleared out for the whole afternoon. That was great. Lucky for Buzz they never found out who planted it.’

His face expressed no pleasure in the memory. It retained its air of absent-minded melancholy.

‘And once he got a farting cushion and put it on old Mary Lawson’s chair. That wasn’t too bad. Gave us a real buzz when she plumped down on it and oh! Boy! The class hit the roof.’

‘Charming. What did she do?’

Lance showed genuine emotion.

‘Oh, that bitch! You could never reach her whatever you did. Always chasing you for homework and keeping you in…She picked up the cushion and put it on the desk and gave it a great bang like you could hear the fart next door. “And that expresses my opinion of the perpetrator of this vulgar trick.” And then she did it again. You’d have thought she was enjoying it. Pretty crude, for a teacher.

‘The boys thought they’d got to her at Christmas. Trigger found an old kettle on a dump, and they put it in a box and wrapped it up in fancy paper, like a real Christmas present, ribbon and all. We was all waiting to see her open it. Bitch! She never blinked, just took it out and held it up and said it was lovely of us to give her something that would always remind her of us. A dirty old kettle. And then she turned it up, it had a rusty bottom with three holes in it, and she put on a goofy look and said, “Whenever I look at it, I shall see your dear faces.” She should talk about faces, the old bag. She’d never see thirty again, I bet.’

Who was it said that teaching was a contest with Marquis of Queensberry rules on one side and all-in wrestling on the other?

‘Did you think she was going to love you for it?’

‘That’s not the point. She’s a teacher, isn’t she? Teachers aren’t supposed to get personal. They ought to know better than talk about people’s looks.’

‘I don’t believe she was thinking about your looks. She might have been looking into your nasty little minds.’

Perhaps she had not been so badly off after all, with Mr Richard as her only burden.

‘You’re just as bad. Should have been one yourself.’

‘Well, you don’t have to put up with me.
Go back to bed
.’

‘Tea’ll be along in a minute. I’ll go back then.’

‘And stay there.’

Lance assumed his dying duck expression.

‘Don’t you love me, Izzy? Sending me away, it isn’t nice.’

‘I love you enough to want you to get better. Now be off.’

He sighed, shrugged and shuffled away, leaving Isobel to reflect that he had shown one genuine emotion, hurt over the teacher’s sarcasm. The antics with the wares from the joke shop had seemed to be a wretched substitute for anything called fun. His juvenile attempts at sexual insolence were just as much a wretched substitute for love.

‘You play up to him,’ said Val.

‘I don’t want to. I try not to get drawn in. I really want him to stay in bed. How about telling him yourself? He might listen to you.’

‘Why should I? It’s none of my business. He doesn’t come to talk to me.’

Isobel might have known that flattery would get her nowhere.

She mastered Embossed Leaf Stitch in spite of interruptions and managed to complete two repeats. She liked the effect of heavy iron grey lace. It put her in mind of balconies in Paddington.

‘You’re wasting your time, you know. You’re going to have to pull it out in the long run.’

‘Well, I think it’s all right, myself.’

‘It is simply ridiculous.’

Being involved in the tricky business of knitting two together through the back of the loop, Isobel let the comment pass.

On Thursday morning, Doctor Stannard paused and frowned over Isobel’s fever chart.

‘Time that fever settled down.’

If you had to spend your time keeping Val’s head above water and keeping Lance in bed, she thought, you might have a fever too.

The news on the balcony was that Eily had failed D grade.

‘Have to put on more weight. He said to give it another couple of weeks. But I never do put on weight. It isn’t my nature. I’ll be here for ever if that’s what they want.’

‘Try drinking water, Eily. Fill yourself up before you go up there. That’ll do it.’

‘I’m near enough to wetting myself when I’m up there anyhow. Wouldn’t want to risk it.’

Pat was to move down to surgery next Monday.

Gladys was called to witness that Isobel’s knitting was ridiculous.

Cautiously, she agreed that maybe it looked a bit funny.

‘Who’s going to wear it?’ asked Eily, with meaning.

‘Isobel, I suppose,’ said Val. ‘I can’t imagine that anyone else would.’

‘May I have it back, please? Or would you like to put it back where you found it?’

This missed its mark entirely, since Val could see no wrong in taking Isobel’s knitting from her cabinet and putting it on display without her permission.

On Friday, Val watched Janet’s husband walk along the verandah.

She said, ‘I have a terrible thought about this. I think Janet’s husband is having an affair with Nurse Baker.’

Isobel was startled.

‘What makes you think that?’

‘I think that is why he changes the time of his visits. He comes when she is on duty.’

‘But they never have a word to say to each other.’

‘And that’s another thing. It’s not natural. It’s not just that they don’t speak. They pretend not to see each other. I saw them pass each other on the verandah yesterday and they didn’t exchange a look. That isn’t how people behave, unless they have a reason. What other reason could there be? And they both look so wretched. He ought to be happier now that Janet and Brett are doing so well, but he’s looking more and more worried. And she was looking wretched too when she walked past him.’